In 2009, Ms Omido explained to her employer that their business of battery recycling could end up killing the people living near the plant. Her employer asked her to never talk about it again.
The battery melting process emitted both toxic fumes and a discharge that seeped into the neighbouring densely populated Owino Uhuru community. It affected both the air and the water, causing illnesses.
The doctors tried in vain to use malaria medication to treat the Owino Uhuru's population who came in with unexplainable diarrhea and strange rashes. The children did not improve, because they did not have a mosquito-borne infectious disease; they were lead-poisoned. Indeed, the recycling factory has put a neighborhood of children at serious risk of lead exposure.
Lead pollution remains in the ground for decades. Some countries are shipping hazardous waste to other countries ill equipped to process it and they are doing it legally. The people who are shipping all these hazardous waste are turning their heads and pretending it is not their problem!
Chronic lead poisoning in children is hard to diagnose because the symptoms are fairly common, among them low I.Q. and attention issues. Without blood test result, a definitive diagnosis is impossible. Few labs in Africa offer lead testing and the cost about $100- is beyond the reach of poor families.
According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, "Blood lead levels of 10 micrograms per deciliter of blood in young children can result in lowered intelligence, reading and learning disabilities, impaired hearing, reduced attention span, hyperactivity and antisocial behavior."
Performing crude battery recycling to where people live is a frightening thing indeed!
Phyllis Omido worked in the office of a lead smelter in Mombasa, when her baby King David, became sick. She learnt that he had acute lead poisoning.
She wrote numerous letters to Kenyan's environment and health agencies. She marched in the streets of Mombasa and organized to have children tested for elevated blood lead levels, despite death threats and an attempted kidnapping of Phyllis and her son.
Human Rights Watch began working with Phyllis in 2011, documenting the extent of lead poisoning in the community.
Phyllis' tireless activism paid off. Most environmental activists are not professional campaigners but ordinary people caught up in extraordinary events, either unable or unwilling to turn a blind eye.
Every week, two activists are killed for their work!
When Phyllis Omido and other residents peacefully protested the pollution and the lack of government response, they were threatened, harassed, arrested and beaten up by thugs.
Omido said, "I never dreamed of becoming an activist, but the issue of lead poisoning became personal after my son was born." Today she is one of Kenyan's most outspoken environmental activists.
Phyllis Omido was awarded Goldman prize environmental award after battling to close the lead plant in her kenyan slum that was poisoning its inhabitants and her baby.
How is her son? He is well now, she said. "Some people say I should get his IQ tested to see if the lead damaged his development, but I don't want to do that. What difference would it make?"
The courts have found the government and investors liable for poisoning a community with a toxic smelting plant.
Congratulations Phyllis Omido!
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